Tobacco, Alcohol, Drugs Kill 7 Million a Year

Reuters ^ | 25 Feb 2003 | Reuters

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Because it was a study done on addictive substances, naturally. Blood pressure, obesity, and heart disease are not addictive substances.

[biblewonk]

I do find it interesting that you are refuting what you perceive to be inferrence with your own inferrence.

It's easy to discern a statistic from an inferrence. It doesn't require a statistic to declare an inferrence an inferrence.

[Ramius]

I would like to point out that, despite all the advances in medicine, and all of the government programs, the human mortality rate still is firmly fixed at 100%.

Yep... When they finally outlaw all the stuff that's bad for us, there's going to be a whole lot of people that'll feel pretty silly laying there in a hospital dying of *nothing*.

[newgeezer]

Are you hungry? Nothing ever happens around here.

You're sniffing the shoe again, my friend.

[rooster1]

As reported on Fox:

John McMorran, of Lakeland, considered coffee his elixir and quit cigars at age 97. He was born June 19, 1889, in a log cabin in Michigan. He was the fourth-oldest person in the world.

"He was never sick," a 35-year-old great-granddaughter, Lisa Saxton, told The Ledger of Lakeland. "He lived a great life. Obviously, he was well put together. He smoked cigars, drank beer and ate greasy food. He was an amazing man."

[wbill]

Many years (and jobs) ago, I had a co-worker was an incredibly strict vegan. He would bring what looked like nuts, twigs, and sawdust (it probably wasn't, but that's what it looked like) for lunch. He ran 5 to 8 miles a day, religiously. He took a strict regimen of vitamins. He was in incredibly good shape - probably wasn't more than an ounce of fat on him.

He was also one of the most dour men I've ever met. Went through three divorces. He was completely friendless - I tried to speak to him on occasion and he had nothing to talk about but his work and his health. Not too long ago, I heard from another former co-worker that he was hit by a car while he was jogging.

Tragic. But you can also draw your own moral from this story.

[vin-one]

I think the UN should lead an effort to outlaw all of those substances listed.
We need to physically stop these people from endangering themselves.
I think a strong gov't effort in support of stopping use of all these things is vital to the survival of our world.
I say we start a war on dangerous drugs, cig, booze, and narcotics.
think of all the money we could save by wiping out these evil things, in reduced health care costs.
send all abusers to jail......

by the way the above was sarcasm

[robertpaulsen]

How can you compare deaths from illegal drugs to deaths from legal drugs? You can certainly state the number, but you can't draw any conclusions.

Only if illegal drugs were made legal and had the same availibility could you even begin to compare. Also, what are the raw numbers? How many smokers are there? How many illegal drug users are there?

Totally useless statistics.

[MrLeRoy]

Only if illegal drugs were made legal and had the same availibility could you even begin to compare. [...] Totally useless statistics.

That assumes that the only interesting question is, 'how intrinsically lethal are these substances.' It's not clear that this is the only interesting question.

[dirtboy]

How can you compare deaths from illegal drugs to deaths from legal drugs? You can certainly state the number, but you can't draw any conclusions.

You can look at the fact that illegal drugs cause THREE percent of lethality from drug use and make plenty of directionally-accurate conclusions, unless, of course, you could care less about accuracy or direction.

[eno_]

I feel sorry for people who believe numbers like this [3%].

3% sounds high to me. Booze is by far the drug of choice for derelicts and addicts. It is also deadly: $20 worth will very reliably kill you. It quite literally deadlier than heroin. Self-destructive behavior cannot be prevented by prohibitions. The same people drinking themselves to death today would be huffing gasoline if booze were illegal. If you want to see really scary addicts, go see some glue-sniffers. Not a brain cell left alive. If you really care about reducing misery, you would realize that addiction is the problem, not drugs. Drugs are just an excuse for government goons to suck $70 billion out of our economy each year in the name of a war that, if won, would reduce drug deaths by approximately 3%. Yeah, that's worth losing our freedom over.

[robertpaulsen]

"It's not clear that this is the only interesting question."

The article made no distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic lethality. He just provided totals. Why is that an issue?

If one drug eats your liver and the other makes you think you can fly off a 20 story building, you're just as dead.

[Max McGarrity]

Alcohol, tobacco and drugs are too indiscriminate and often target the wrong people.

Unlike starvation, AIDS and TB which target the "right" people. Apparently.

[MrLeRoy]

I meant intrinsic as in 'independent of how many people use it.'

[MrLeRoy]

Only if illegal drugs were made legal and had the same availibility could you even begin to compare.

Does it seem likely that if they were legal useage would increase thirty-fold---or anything like thirty-fold?

[biblewonk]

3% sounds high to me. Booze is by far the drug of choice for derelicts and addicts. It is also deadly: $20 worth will very reliably kill you. It quite literally deadlier than heroin.

What is the heroin usage equivalent to 2 beers after work or better yet communion wine.

Self-destructive behavior cannot be prevented by prohibitions.

Like concerts with fireworks?

The same people drinking themselves to death today would be huffing gasoline if booze were illegal. If you want to see really scary addicts, go see some glue-sniffers. Not a brain cell left alive. If you really care about reducing misery, you would realize that addiction is the problem, not drugs. Drugs are just an excuse for government goons to suck $70 billion out of our economy each year in the name of a war that, if won, would reduce drug deaths by approximately 3%. Yeah, that's worth losing our freedom over.

Making all drugs legal all the time would cost a lot more. Atleast that is the opinion of a lot of us. There is an important gray scale to the anti-WOD and that is the vast difference between legalizing all drugs all the time and lightening up on people who want to smoke a little weed. I don't have much problem at all with the latter end of the scale but the former end of the scale shows what happend to minds on too many drugs.

[eno_]

Only if illegal drugs were made legal and had the same availibility could you even begin to compare.

Be careful what you wish for. Consider that Marijuana is the most common illegal drug. It is also far safer than booze, for sure. I bet there is not a single credible marijuana death in these numbers. So if marijuana displaced alcohol, the number of deaths would decline. Would that be good, or bad?

[robertpaulsen]

You don't know how many people are taking illegal drugs. Could be that 50% of the people who do illegal drugs die. Maybe only 5% of people who drink die. Maybe 10% of smokers die. Can you tell from this article? Can you refute this from the article? Can you be "directionally-accurate" from this article?

All you know from this article is the number of people who die. And you're comparing the easily available legal products with underground illegal products.

How many people die each year from eating dirt? How many people die from eating food? Geez, maybe if we all ate dirt we'd live longer. This is junk science and junk statistics. It's worthless.

[uncbob]

Tragic. But you can also draw your own moral from this story.

Watch out for traffic while jogging

[eno_]

Making all drugs legal would, of course, make very little difference in thse numbers. Hard drug use is self-limiting. Hard drug users become non-functional pretty quickly. That is why the hard core Drug Warriors will never "let up" on people that "want to smoke a little weed." That's 80% of their customer-base. They would be as out of business as they would be under a complete legalization.